Whoopsies

Nintendo and Warner Brothers and all those other high up Pokemon people have made plenty of mistakes. Hey, they're human, I won't hold that against them -- they aren't perfect. But too many of their errors surround Mew and Mewtwo! Read 'em and weep, official-type people!

Episode Goofs

• In the Episode 13, Mystery at the Lighthouse, the one with Bill in it, Bill's front door has a carving of Mewtwo on it! Mewtwo wasn't even born yet, and besides, the only live person to see him and remember it is Giovanni (at least after the First Movie.) Mewtwo is shown again in the same episode on Bill's big computer screen with all the Pokemon on it. Maybe you should read my theory about this...
  
• From Black_Mewtwo: In the Episode 63, Battle for the Badge, where Jessie, James, and Meowth steal Togepi and take it to the Boss, one wall in Giovanni's office (in both reality and their daydream) has a painting of Mewtwo on it. He's classified information, so why is he up there on the wall? DreamDratini writes that Giovanni was very proud to be Mewtwo's trainer, and so this picture is merely a sign of his pride. DreamDratini also says that Team Rocket members would be the only ones in the office, so there would be no problem with having Mewtwo's picture there. That makes sense, though it does seem a bit careless if you ask me. Excessive pride often leads to one's downfall, you know.
  

First Movie Goofs

• From Mewsette: When Mewtwo's sitting on his shattered cloning tube and talking with the scientists, there looks like there is another Mewtwo's nose in the other tube on the right side of the screen. But, actually, according to Peanutbutter Mewtwo's site the original shot had Mewtwo and Dr. Fuji on the sides of the screen with their faces reflected on the glass tubes. The shot was cropped, so you can only see the tip of Mewtwo's nose now, and a little of Fuji's hair.
  
• A little bit later, Ash is facing a pirate-like trainer in a Pokemon Battle. Although the Pirate Trainer is shown throwing out his Machamp twice, this is not a mistake (it might have been a bad idea though). The scene had to be adjusted to fit the English music better, and the dubbers must have, for some reason, seen this instant replay as a good way to fix the issue.

  

• After Ash defeats two of the Pirate Trainer's Pokemon, the Pirate Trainer becomes angry and attacks with three Pokemon all at once: a Venomoth, Pinsir, and a Golem. Ash sends out Pikachu, who beats them all with one shock, including Golem who SHOULD be resistant to electricity. Yeah, Ash trained Pikachu once, but in the game, it makes no difference, and I like the game's logic better.

  

• Umio / Fergus tells Officer Jenny that all his Pokemon are of the water-type, but we later see he has a Nidoqueen, a poison/ground-type.
• During the scene when some people are trying to cross the stormy sea riding their Pokemon, Umio / Fergus releases his Gyarados. It's normally yellow lips are blue for a second. I guess the water was really cold.

  

• In the same scene, I thought that Soroa / Corey's Pidgeot appears on screen as a Fearow for a second, for no apparent reason. However, according to Lumina Sumnor, this isn't a mistake, but rather a completely different trainer. Soroa / Corey leaves first, then Umio / Fergus, and then the Fearow trainer (who apparently is a blondish girl if you look closely. In one of the pictures below, she's the one with the red arrow over her head). Lumina also says that it is mentioned in the DVD commentary that this girl is another trainer who tried to reach New Island, but apparently didn't make it. Anyway, sorry official Pokemon people. I underestimated you here. But with your track record, who can blame me, eh?

  

  

• Soroa / Corey calls his Pidgeot a Pidgeotto when he introduces it. This possibly resulted from a mistranslation seeing as the Japanese name for Pidgeot is "Pijoto," and I guess I can understand how that could be mistakenly made "Pidgeotto" rather than the accurate "Pidgeot." But come on. These are official Pokemon people making this mistake!
• From Shantel: In the introduction of Mewtwo scene, after Mewtwo reflects Gyarados's hyper beam back at it and knocks it out, the camera pans down and shows Umio / Fergus jumping into the pool and swimming towards Gyarados. Here, Nidoqueen is shown colored purple like a Nidoking, rather than her proper blue.

  

• Jessie, James, and Meowth make a few mistakes as they name the Pokemon silhouettes flashing on the computer screen or as the Pokemon come into their glass tanks. At one point they call a Scyther an Alakazam. According to the DVD commentary, this was indeed a mistake that the dubbers made, although a kid (a KID) noticed the mistake toward the end of production. To save their booties, the movie people decided to leave it in as a joke and blame Jessie and James's Pokemon ineptitude. I say the dubbers really should take responsibilty for their own mistake and give Team Rocket a break. They're already being blasted off every episode; they don't need to be made to look dumb on the side, for things that aren't even their fault. And besides, a few seconds later, Meowth calls a Sandslash a Sandshrew as it enters the glass tank. The dubbers do not account for this at all. I bet they missed this mistake entirely! So phooey on them!

  

• Mewtwo captures and clones Ash's Charizard, Soroa / Corey's Venusaur, and Sweet / Neesha's Blastoise, but he already had clones of those Pokemon. Then, during the battle between the clones and the originals, there is only one cloned Charizard, Venusaur, and Blastoise. We never see the new clones. What happened to them? The best explaination I can come up with is that Mewtwo captured the original Pokemon, but since he had the clones already the computer did not clone them, rather keeping them stored until Mewtwo would come to destroy them (as he said he would).
• Stolen from Team Rocket's Rockin', as submitted by "Alex": When the explosion occurs that releases all of the originals, they run across the screen. If you look at Vaporeon, you will find it hasn't got a tail fin!
• In the scene toward the end, when all the clones and originals are battling with their special ablities removed, Pikachu's clone (Pikatwo) approaches Pikachu with sparks coming from its cheeks. With Mewtwo blocking all of the Pokemon's powers, Pikatwo should not have been able to do that. However, it is apparently never stated in the Japanese that Mewtwo was blocking any special abilities. The dubbers put that in to explain why the Pokemon were struggling the way they were, rather than using their powers. I guess they missed Pikatwo's cheek action when they thought that up.

Mewtwo Returns Goofs

• The movie people forgot to (or decided not to) dub the cloned Meowth's (Meowtwo) lines! He says the Japanese word for "meow," which is "nya," throughout the entire movie. (Thanks!)
• From Static2007: When the clones, Pikachu, and Meowth are swimming to the island (the part when Mewtwo's asking if it's better to let them go or make them stay so he can protect him) the Ninetales clone is swimming. How does it do that when it's a fire type? (Zephyr Analea has come up with a possible answer to this! Clarity Lake has healing properties, does so as long as the Ninetales was swimming in that lake specifically, however much he is hurt by the water, he would be instantly healed by it. I doubt that was what the animators were thinking, but that makes sense to me!)
• Stolen from TV Tome: This movie marks the first time the good guys meet Giovanni. But for no reason at all, the good guys seem to already know him! Vye Brante counters that the good guys do not give any indication that they know who Giovanni is. At that point in time, he is just a guy who was talking about deciding if Mewtwo would live or not and had a group of Team Rocket agents behind him. I doubt they'd assume he was on their side, given that. And all they said to him was, "Oh no you won't!" "We won't let you!" not that they know exactly who he is.
• From Pixen: At about the halfway mark, we see the shot of Giovanni and he says: "Prepare my old friend for at sunrise we will meet again" or something similar and then it fades out. Now the NEXT shot, the one of Mount Quena, the lake, the bushes and clouds is the one with the mistake in it. There's the ominous music from the First Movie that they dubbed in, and while that's going on, the clouds just sit in the sky. And then after four seconds or so they start moving rapidly! Check it out; it's the funniest thing ever. My explanation/guess for this is that because of the music they had to add a few seconds to the shot to make it all fit; and hope us audience wouldn't notice.
• From Alison: This isn't really a mistake, but Team Rocket locks the clones in a cell with the humans, and the only way they got out was when the explosion happened. Couldn't the clones just use their attacks to get out? (I noticed this too. The Gyarados bugged me in particular. It just sits there with its mouth open through pretty much the whole movie. Come on, Hyper Blast those bars already!)
• From Lumina Sumnor: Mewtwo is being tortured by Giovanni's blue and red machines. Finally, Mewtwo decides to use the last of his strength to break free. Pikachu and Pikatwo help out by Thundershocking the red machine, and eventually it explodes. The other machine then goes haywire and also explodes. This second machine should be blue, but it is also colored red. However, Vye Brante says that, while Mewtwo is using up all of his power against the machines, it is shown for a split second changing from blue to red. So I guess this is not really a mistake. It doesn't make a lot of sense though. If red means the machine is approaching the point of blowing up, why did the other machine start out red?
  

• I guess it is possible, but if the video game Pokedex is accurate, would Ash really be able to carry Mewtwo around at the end of Mewtwo Returns? His Pokemon couldn't have been that much of a help...

  

• From DrumUltimA: At the end, Ash says "This time, we'll both be able to remember!" Didn't he not know about last time? Dog Ears thinks that Mewtwo might have removed the memory modification that Ash had previously been placed under, but this is never explicitly stated. Mewtwo just talks about their right to keep these new memories, not necessarily the past memories. Although this still is a possibility... If he's going to let them keep the new memories, why not restore their old memories too?

Official Website Goofs

• This image of Mew being used in a battle used to be on Nintendo's offical Pokemon website in an advertisment for Pokemon Blue and Red. It's also apparently very early in the game, or at least around Pallet town, based on the low-level Rattata that is the opponent. A little unbalanced with such a relatively high-level Mew, eh? This is quite a fantastic message to be sending us, isn't it? People in Nintendo either cheated, or installed Mew into their own games to gain this unfair advantage.

  

• Also formerly on Nintendo's official Pokemon site, in the movies section, they say, "When scientists genetically created a new Pokemon, Mew, they had no idea what sort of disastrous events would result." Um...they didn't create Mew. They created a clone of Mew, also known as Mewtwo. Is this new to you people?
• Formerly on Warner Brother's official Mewtwo Returns site, they had a drawing guide that said Mewtwo's ears are horns.

Book Goofs

• From Mewtwocool: In the book version of Mewtwo Strikes Back, when Mewtwo has his Charizard, Blastoise, and Venusaur clones fight the originals that are owned by the trainers, the two other trainers besides Ash are said to be Umio and Sweet. However, it was Soroa / Corey who owned the Venusaur. Umio / Fergus was not part of that battle at all.
• From Zephyr Analea: On the last page of the children's book "Mewtwo Is Watching You", they tell of Mewtwo's statistics. Here, they say he is 6'7" tall, and 169 lbs. Problem is, they forgot 100 pounds, he's supposed to weigh 269 lbs!

Inconsistencies and Weirdness

• The Red, Yellow, and Blue versions of the Pokemon video games seriously contradict the First Movie. These are the diary entries in the Cinnabar lab:
  • July 5. Guyana, South America: A new Pokemon discovered deep in the jungle.
  • July 10. We christened the newly discovered Pokemon, Mew.
  • Feb. 6. Mew gave birth. We named the newborn Mewtwo.
  • Sept. 1. Mewtwo is far too powerful. We have failed to curb its vicious tendencies...

  The first two and the last entries match the movie, but the middle one totally contradicts everything. Mewtwo is Mew's clone, not child! Even the Red/Blue Pokedex contradicts that, saying that Mewtwo was the result of a scientist's experiment. This was debated in the Ask section. I'll link to that here eventually. It is valid to say Mew was found in Guyana, South America, since it is established in the CD Drama and hinted in the movie that Mew spends time in the Andes Mountains and in the Amazon.

• All over the Pokemon Universe, before the introduction of the Gold and Silver Pokemon, everyone was saying there was 150 Pokemon. Bill, Oak, Giovanni, the PokeRap, everyone. But then in Battle for the Badge, Gary tries to use his PokeDex on Mewtwo, and it has no data. If there is no data on Mewtwo in the PokeDex, and nobody knows he exists, and Mewtwo is Pokemon #150, how the heck can people go around saying there are 150 Pokemon? Then don't they then acknowledge the existence of only 149 Pokemon? I guess they could be rounding up, but that's still weird. Could Mew be considered the 150th Pokemon in the list? But that also doesn't make sense. Most people consider Mew to be merely a legend or a mirage, or at least extinct. Plus, Mew is not included in the PokeRap (check the lyrics here!), but Mewtwo is! What gives?

  

• From Lewis: Also, some weirdness about the PokeDex: In the first episode of Pokemon, Ash sees Ho-oh and takes out his Pokedex to identify it. Dexter calmly says that it doesn't know what the Pokemon is, and not all of them have been discovered yet. Yet, when Gary uses his Pokedex to identify Mewtwo, the screen is all fuzzy and it freaks out. Could it be that Mewtwo's equipment interfered with the Pokedex and messed it up?
• Why is Mewtwo #150 and Mew is #151? Wouldn't they need to know that Mew exists before they can decide that Mewtwo exists? (This was debated in the Ask section. I'll link to that here eventually)
• There are major inconsistencies concerning the heights of both Mew and Mewtwo. Mew seems to be growing...
  

  ...And Mewtwo seems to be shrinking.

  

  DreamDratini writes that I might just be thrown off by the perspective. "Mew seems bigger because he's closer than the trainer but he's next to Ash in the movie so he's actual size in that shot. With the second Mewtwo shot, you're sorta looking up at Mewtwo slightly which is why he seems smaller." Okay, I'll give you that, but I'm going to keep a look out for more comparison shots.

• From Shantel: Blastoise and Blastoisetwo have five small claws on each hand in Mewtwo Strikes Back. In Mewtwo Returns, Blastoisetwo has three big claws per hand. Did the claws fuse together somewhere along the line?
  

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Do you know any other mistakes involving Mew or Mewtwo or any of their movies? Does anything here mistakenly call something a mistake when it really wasn't a mistake? Please e-mail me!

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